Jupit

The planets in a telescope

Seven discs at one scale, as Earth sees them at the site clock’s time. Venus swings from a small full disc to a huge thin crescent; Mars swells every two years. Press Play at a week a second or faster and watch them breathe. It is my favourite thing on this site.

  • Mercury

    Doing the sums

    Drawn from: MESSENGER map

  • Venus

    Doing the sums

    Drawn from: plain cloud

  • Mars

    Doing the sums

    Drawn from: Viking map

  • Jupiter

    Doing the sums

    Drawn from: Cassini map from 2000

  • Saturn

    Doing the sums

    Drawn from: belts from a Hubble photo, rings from Cassini

  • Uranus

    Doing the sums

    Drawn from: plain cloud

  • Neptune

    Doing the sums

    Drawn from: plain cloud

Sizes are in seconds of arc (″): the full Moon is about 1,800″ wide. Celestial north is at the top, as in binoculars; many telescopes turn the view upside down. Each planet shows the face and the phase calculated for that moment. Some confessions. Mercury, Mars and Jupiter are drawn from spacecraft maps, so they show far more detail than any telescope, and Jupiter’s clouds are those of the year 2000. Saturn’s belts are read from one Hubble photograph of 1997 and are the same all the way round. Venus, Uranus and Neptune are plain colours from the site’s palette, because a telescope shows little more and I have no freely usable maps of them. See Saturn’s rings large